


Osteophyte

by thescrewtapedemos



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Hate Sex, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 13:54:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15120830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescrewtapedemos/pseuds/thescrewtapedemos
Summary: Sid didn't knock out Giroux's tooth but he wishes he had. He does break Giroux's wrists, and then he wishes he hadn't.





	Osteophyte

**Author's Note:**

> the writing process for this is best described as every song by the national playing at once at 4am. which should tell you everything you need to know. 
> 
> inevitably, this is moliver’s fault!
> 
> enjoy  
> xoxo

The thing about wanting to hurt someone and then hurting someone is, and Sid learns this the hard way and way too late for it to matter, that then you've hurt someone.

-/-

The kettle is whistling from the stove, the French press he isn't entirely sure about is gleaming from the counter. A gift from his sister, because she'd said it makes better coffee and he needs to try new things.

Giroux watches him fumble with the filter. His eyes are pouched with exhaustion. His hair is wet and standing on end. His mouth looks kind of bruised. He's very far from beautiful. 

He doesn't say anything and the kettle just keeps whistling in the empty, quiet house. 

Sid doesn't look at him and presses the plunger down.

-/-

“Why should I respect you for being good?” Giroux asks him every time. Not words; in the way his skates dig into the ice before he throws himself into a check, in the slap of a dirty wrister. In his eyes, flat and poison at the other end of a faceoff. Giroux hates him.

He doesn't have an answer. 

“I'm good,” he wants to scream sometimes, not at Giroux, “that's not my fault.” 

It is his fault, down in the technicalities of it. He burns everything he has to be good. He wants hockey so goddamn badly. But on a lot of other levels it's not, it's not his fault he's good. He was born and bred _Sid the kid_ , wonder boy. 

He wants to scream it at every fan that stops him in the street to criticize his PPG or whatever it is that should _be better_. He wants to scream it at the players that hate him _because_ he’s good. It's not his fault he's good. 

He's never wanted to scream that at Giroux. Giroux would just laugh at him.

-/-

Giroux hates him, which isn't new in any way. Lots of people hate Sid. Lots of players hate Sid. It isn't new.

He sneers at Sid across the faceoff circle and Sid doesn't know why he's so fucking angry. It isn't new, being hated. 

He doesn't know why he hates Giroux right back.

-/-

He shows up at Sid’s after he's told everyone he's left Pittsburgh but before he actually has. After getting kicked from the playoffs but before the sting has faded. He's not making any attempt to hide who he is but the street is deserted and the car parked behind him is a rental.

He looks composed. Hands tucked into his hoodie, baseball cap backwards. He still looks skinny. 

“Here to gloat?” Sid asks, though he knows Giroux isn't. Giroux says something flat to him in French, something he doesn't catch. He shrugs and Giroux snorts and pushes past him. 

Sid holds him down to the bed by his biceps and not his wrists. Giroux leaves without having said a word of English. 

Sid puts the soiled sheets in the trash and finishes packing.

-/-

_Why should I respect you for being good?_

Sid doesn't know the answer to that.

-/-

He lays awake and thinks about what it had to feel like, playing with that broken wrist.

He hadn't felt it give way under his stick. It should have felt like something, but it hadn't. It still doesn't feel real. He doesn't particularly want it to feel real.

-/-

Being hated used to hurt but it's easier now. He has people. He has his family and his friends and his team. People that don't care if he's good or not. People that like that he's good but would love him anyway if he weren't.

He fishes. He works charity events sometimes that aren't even through the NHL. He does love to work out, not just for hockey. His body is something he's worked too hard on not to be proud of. 

His therapist tells him it's essential to have things outside of hockey. 

She's got a calm little room and doesn't mind how furtive Sid is going to it, because she's worked with hockey players before. She stocks sugar free suckers and the flavors shift often enough he knows people must be taking them. He thinks he'd like her under different circumstances. 

The wallpaper is a sage green with pale blue pinstripes. The windowsills are white and the carpet is beige. He never takes a sucker and she never offers them. He never sees any other athletes there. 

“What do you do that isn't hockey?” she asks. 

She's laughing when he tells her honestly that he's not very good at having things that aren't hockey, but it isn't disbelieving or mocking laughter, so it doesn't really bother him. 

She's a sports psychologist. She's seen this shit again and again.

-/-

He doesn't _not_ get angry but he gets angrier with Giroux than he does with nearly anyone.

Weight loss doesn't sit pretty on him but it doesn't sit pretty on Sid either. He's bony, down a good ten pounds. He needs a haircut. He isn't beautiful. He's sneering across the faceoff circle like he's daring Sid to take another shot. 

He makes Sid so angry, but he never makes Sid want to make excuses for being better than him. He doesn't make Sid want to apologize. He makes Sid want to ram him into the boards. 

He grins at Sid with blood in his teeth and spits, “You think I fucking respect you?”

-/-

He shows up at Sid's again and the Flyers lost the game but it had been hard, a grueling fight to the net every time. The boards rattling again and again. Goal horn, goal horn. Sid had hit the ice on a check, not from Giroux for once, but Giroux had been grinning when he'd gotten up.

He's not grinning now. He's barely looking at Sid and he doesn't say a word until Sid's got him on the bed, spread out and dissected in the light through the window. 

It's too quiet. Giroux is too quiet, because he never really talks to Sid much in English like this but he'll spew venom in French until Sid fucks the voice out of him. He's just watching Sid now and there's no reading a play when it’s not in motion. 

He's not playoffs skinny, not yet. His hips have a little give to them and there are bruises tattooed into his ribs from pad slippage. He watches Sid watch him, doesn't flinch when Sid gets a hand under his leg and lifts it. 

It's too quiet. It's something Sid really doesn't understand. 

“If you're looking for something to break my wrists are up here,” and Sid looks up at him and Giroux is smiling horribly. 

He thinks of bone giving way. 

Giroux follows him up to the head of the bed eventually. He doesn't ask what's wrong, because he's not stupid. He's strong enough to pry Sid’s hands away from his mouth and unkind enough to hold him open until Sid looks at him. 

“Pace your breathing,” he says and then breathes deliberately until Sid stops hyperventilating and breathes along. 

He's watching Sid. He's contemplating something. Sid doesn't know what that something could be. 

“I hate you,” Sid says. He feels raw.

-/-

He's hurt plenty of people. That's hockey. It's coded into the rules. They’ve hurt him right back.

He doesn't think about them like he thinks about this.

-/-

“I wanted to hurt him,” he tells his therapist. He can't get much volume to his voice. She's not looking at him like she's judging him. She's probably heard all this before.

“Have you forgiven yourself yet?” she asks gently. 

He thinks about his kettle screaming into a silent house and Giroux, words in French, a silence across the breakfast bar. He thinks about the breakaway and the goal horn and a snapping dirty wrister into the back of the net. He thinks he's seen his share of surgery rooms. 

“I don't understand,” he says.

-/-

_Why should I respect you because you're good?_

Sid doesn't have an answer. He just doesn't have an answer.

-/-

Giroux rolls off him and he's a mess of sweat and come and spit, breathing like he's just gotten off a shift that lasted a whole period. He has bags under his eyes and a bruise by his mouth Sid didn't put there. He isn't sneering but he still isn't particularly beautiful.

“Did you forgive me?” Sid asks. He's so exhausted his muscles are trembling. He's been that tired for days, for most of the season if he's honest with himself. Giroux had fucked him anyway. No excuses. No quarter. 

Giroux's mouth goes slack. For just a moment, just a moment he's a softer man. He doesn't blink and Sid looks at him and doesn't recognize him. He doesn't recognize this man. 

Giroux gets up and pulls his pants on methodically. 

Sid follows him down the stairs and through the house, naked. He's sore down into his bones. Giroux doesn't look at him until they reach the door. 

“This isn't for you,” Giroux says. He leaves. Sid is alone in his house, his silent house, cold and naked with come still drying to his stomach.

-/-

He doesn't have an answer for why Giroux should respect him, if being good isn't enough. If being better isn't going to be enough to answer that question.

“Have you found something that isn't hockey?” his therapist asks him.

-/-

“Have you considered apologizing?” his therapist asks gently.

Sid tucks his hands between his thighs. The room is a little overwarm, with the sun through the windows. There's sweat leaching through the collar of his shirt. 

“I don't know if I can,” he says. 

He isn’t sure if he means that the words might not come out, or if he’s not sure if the words would be accepted. Both are uncertain. 

He looks down at his hands tucked between his thighs. The insides of his wrists are pressed together, pale blue veins and the pastel hollows where his bones are. The skin there is soft. 

“It’s something to think about,” his therapist says to him diplomatically. Her hair falls around her shoulder in the heat, long and curling and frizzy at the ends. She’s tapping a notecard on her desk, a slow and careful rhythm. He paces his breathing to it.

-/-

Nobody gets their nails into him like Giroux and that's always been given. He hates that about him, on the ice and when he's getting plowed into the mattress and when it's just him and that carousel argument in his head that would go on forever if he let it.

“ _I don't fucking respect you,_ ” Giroux says, a memory constructed of a million faceoffs and viciously controlled handshake lines. 

“ _Why should I respect you because you're good?_ ” 

He wants to grab Giroux by the shoulders and shake him until the answer falls out. He doesn't know. He just doesn't know. When he imagines doing just that the Giroux in his head just laughs and laughs at him, open-mouthed, gap-toothed and not anything like beautiful.

-/-

Giroux shouldn’t be in Pittsburgh but he is anyway.

Sid lets him inside. 

He’s sleek with victory, not as skinny as Sid is used to from these things. It’s too early in the season for this to happen. He doesn’t say anything about that, about Giroux standing on his doorstep in early evening sunlight, flip-flops and worn basketball shorts and a hoodie that makes his shoulders look small like hockey pads might. 

He stands aside. He knows Giroux will push past him if he doesn’t. 

“It was a good game, against the Preds,” he says diplomatically, because he’s tired and he hadn’t been expecting this. There’s no venom built up against the back of his teeth. Giroux shouldn’t be in Pittsburgh and shouldn’t be in his entryway. 

Giroux looks at him. He’s got his hands tucked into his hoodie pocket but the sleeves are pushed up to his elbows. There’s the flash of pale skin, his forearms, the insides of his wrists. He’s got his fake tooth in, Sid sees it when he wets his lips. 

“Don’t do me any favors,” he murmurs. 

There’s no boards to rattle but Giroux rattles the picture frames when he pushes Sid up against the wall.

-/-

Giroux eats a bowl of cereal in his kitchen, boxers and bare chest. It’s late into the night and he hadn’t asked before going into the fridge for milk. He hasn’t said anything that isn’t French since he’d walked in the door. Sid sits at the breakfast bar and doesn’t look at him.

-/-

Geno punches Giroux in the face and Giroux laughs at him with a bloody mouth and Sid wants to go over the boards back onto the ice and punch him again. He doesn’t but Giroux must know, because he turns to laugh at Sid too. _I don’t fucking respect you._

The Flyers win against them and Sid goes home and Giroux doesn’t come. 

There have been times he didn’t come. More than when he does, maybe. Sid goes to bed.

-/-

“You need to work on hobbies,” his therapist says and Sid looks down at his knees.

They’re knobby, he can tell even through his sweatpants. He wants to repeat the same refrain he’s been giving therapists since he was old enough to have a party line to stick to, even though he knows she won’t let him get away with it. He’s just not any good at wanting things that aren’t hockey. 

“I’m working on it,” he says. He likes fishing. He likes doing charity work. He likes to exercise, because he’s good at it.

-/-

“I don’t know if I’d mean it if I apologized,” he admits to his folded hands. Their session is the last one before the game that tells them if they’re in the playoffs or not. She hasn’t asked him about it, and he hasn’t said anything about it, because he doesn’t know if there’s anything wrong with that or if there’s something to say about it even if there were.

She doesn’t ask him what he means. 

“I wanted to hurt him,” he admits, he admits, he admits.

-/-

Giroux wins a different game and they are both in the playoffs. He doesn’t show up in Pittsburgh, he doesn’t show up at Sid’s house. Sid books a flight.

_Why should I respect you?_

-/-

Giroux laughs at him, standing on the porch step.

Sid watches him do it. He’s tired, already playoffs-skinny. There are bones too present in his face. The exhaustion presses down and down and Sid can read it in the lines that bracket Giroux’s eyes when he smiles with his mouth open. He doesn’t have his tooth in and his beard is completely untidy. He’s never once been beautiful to Sid. 

“Come in, come in,” Giroux says and he’s jovially cruel with it. Sid follows him down the hallway. It’s a house, it’s only a house. “Hello, Crosby.” 

He’s still laughing and laughing and laughing. 

He’s still laughing when Sid catches his arm, when he pushes Giroux’s sleeve up. His wrist shifts in Sid’s grip and he’s known how fragile bones can be and known how strong they are anyway, the roll of radius and ulna in his palm. He’s never seen the scars. He turns Giroux’s wrist up to the light and Giroux stops laughing. 

They are very small scars, for everything that they are. Faded by time. White and shiny. 

“I don’t know if I can apologize,” he says. Giroux doesn’t answer right away. He’s watching, Sid sees when he looks up. Hair curling around his temples. He doesn’t look even the slightest bit scared. 

“Good,” Giroux says softly. He’s smiling, his wrist shifting in Sid’s grip. “I don’t know if I can forgive you.”


End file.
